Short Bus Cinema: Episode 43: Kiss Meets the Phantom Of the Park

Show Notes

Want to hear about the worst of the worst movies, but in a fun way? Then this is your show. Join Johnny Krueg (Krueger Nation) and Rik Morgan (Hail Ming Power Hour) as they hit a new level of badness with Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park. Also we have our good friend Joseph Henson from The Hysteria Continues!

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What is Short Bus Cinema?

Bad movies, the world is full of them. And only Johnny Krueg and Rik Morgan are brave enough to watch the worst of the worst. From classic failures, to just plain terrible, this is Short Bus Cinema. We love to watch the movies you hate.

Let's do it.

Been one short bus all day.

Short. Yes.

Gonna see what kind of movie they got

today.

Well, hello, everybody. Welcome back to another fun

filled adventure as the wheels go round

and round on the short bus.

And I am one of your co hosts,

Mister Rock and roll over Rick Morgan. And I'm

here with my brother, mister God of thunder. What's up?

Johnny Krug, the cat man.

No, not much, dude. Easy, cat man. They are

serious.

Yeah, not much. Head along for the ride. Special guest,

Mister Rock and roll all night, party every day. Mister Joseph

Henson. What's up, brother? Oh, not a whole lot.

This, uh, this movie made me feel so unholy.

Oh. So, yeah, this is, uh, this is

one that I wanted to do because it's

one of those love hate movies. I know this movie is terrible, but it's

one of those events that happens when you're a kid. And even

though you hold your head in shame,

I still kind of love this movie because it is terrible.

Man. And we are talking about kiss meets the

phantom, or if you're an old og, kiss meets

the phantom of the park.

You know, this, this movie, I had never seen it before,

watching it this time, but it felt like,

and you, you guys know a lot of the details in the background on this,

but it felt like they were trying, you know, all the

parents thought Kiss was this evil rock band, and it felt like they

put together this movie to say, look, these guys are completely family friendly.

Well, and like I said, there's a lot to talk about

in this movie. But first and foremost, here's, here's kind of what happened.

Yeah, you kind of had this bad karma thing going on with,

you know, parents saying there are knights in Satan service going

around, but the other side of it is

about, I don't know, a year before,

they had released, Marvel had released the Kiss comics,

where Kiss had superhero powers. Like hearing from their

eye. Well, yeah, I mean, they fought

Doctor doom. I mean, they were legit, you know, superheroes in the

Marvel universe. Oh, geez. Yeah,

I mean, and Johnny, I mean, to find one of those original comics

is, like, unreal, what it's worth,

because it was printed in kiss blood.

They actually drew some blood and put it supposedly in the,

the red ink. So when you bought a copy, you had some of their blood

mixed in the red ink order. I mean, there was a big promotion thing.

You can't even find those comics. They've reissued them, and there was

two of them, and they combined them together. But that was such a big hit.

I guess that's what really started

the idea of this movie. But we, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves.

We've got to get into this in a little bit. But let's talk about

some other stuff. So special guest,

Joseph, man, tell us. Tell us what's going on in your world, man.

Oh, not, you know, not a whole lot outside of the hysteria

continues. I'm pretty much doing that full time. We just

released, I think it was terror night. I mean, these episodes

kind of bleed together, but it was terror night from 1987.

We got ten to midnight coming out in a week or so.

Nice. Yeah, we got a few commentaries

in the bag for 88 films, vinegar syndrome and

Arrow. Other than that, I mean, that's pretty much all I do now.

So. Man. So there you go, folks. Short bus.

Then hit the high time. We got a celebrity on the show. Yo,

I wouldn't go that far. He's been

a good buddy for quite a while and we have always enjoyed

having him on. And, man, it's awesome that things are doing so well

for you and the guys. Yeah, it's been ten years. I mean,

we just had our 10th year anniversary as well. Wow. At the end of January.

So it took ten years, but yeah, it's, it's crazy.

Wow. Well, what we're going to do right now, we're going to take a short

break and. Short break.

I wish I could do a good brack. It'd be all right. We're gonna take

a short break. We'll be right back with kiss meets the phantom.

Yo,

get out of the way.

All I know is today it's October 3131 backwards is 13.

It's Friday. It's Halloween 13th, anniversary of the lawnmower

killings as a crazy loose. It's prom night.

Hi, this is Tracy Savage, Debbie from Friday

the 13th part three for the best podcast

ever on old slasher movies. Be sure you find

hysteria continues. You will be glad you did.

And hey, stay out of Crystal Lake, okay? Every episode

we celebrate a classic slasher movie such as Friday the 13th,

Halloween, my Bloody Valentine, happy Birthday to me,

and crazy for Ethel two.

Please don't hurt me, Ethel.

The history continues, bringing slash with Panache since 2011.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and all good podcatchers.

And now for our feature presentation.

All right. And we're back with Kiss meets the Phantom of the park from 1978.

When you think 1978, you don't think movies like Halloween.

You think movies like Kiss meets the Phantom of the park. Yo,

the IMDb for this is a 4.8, which,

man, that is in.

When you compare that, it's like 4.7 too high.

Dude, I was just gonna say, when you put this up to next to things

we've done on short bus in the past, like, I feel like this is,

this isn't as good as some stuff we've done and some in some of those

movies have gotten way lower scores.

But this movie, it is directed by

Gordon Hessler, who did scream and scream again with

Vincent Price and Cry of the Banshee also.

Yeah, it's, it's crazy because there, that's something I'll

talk about later in this movie. But the villain in this man

could have been so much more if they had gotten somebody like Vincent Price.

But this movie's also. It's written by

two different guys. Bye, Don Bru. We'll see

Don Bidet, which. Okay.

And Jan Michael Sherman almost said Jan Michael Vincent.

And they're known for movies like Slithis and Too Hot to handle,

which was, from what I read, too hot to handle is

some kind of, like, sexy adventurer movie.

Sure. Yeah. The cast of this movie is

kissed and the rock band and Anthony

Zerbe. Is that how you say that? Yeah.

Played Edwardevereau. Yeah. Yep. And then Carmine

carried II. I didn't really know anybody in this movie,

but when I looked him up, I'd seen them in every. I mean, well,

you didn't recognize Brian James as the, one of the security guards,

was that. Yeah. Was he really in this? Yeah. You didn't know.

He's like, he said it was him or his twin.

Oh, dude. Yeah. That's so crazy. I'm looking at, yeah, right there. Brian James,

he usually stands out, too, because he kind of looks like a thumb that got,

you know, involved in a machinery accident

in his face. Well, the guy

that plays Devereux has been in a ton of stuff. And your two teenage

supposed actors were both in soap operas at this time, so they were

kind of a hot commodity and everybody knew who they were, so that was kind

of the draw. There's the ones that could actually act.

Well, yeah, the main actress in this, she had, like, she had some good

chops when it came to screaming and stuff like that.

But it's funny when you look a lot of these people up like her.

I mean, they have soap opera stuff, but, like, in the first two or

three credits, it shows this. So you're like, ooh,

sorry. Sorry about that. But, dude,

I mean, again, I mean, and I'm defending it because,

I guess because of the time. But this thing was so

huge when it came out. And, yeah, it is not good.

And like I said, the kiss had a thing where if

you worked for them, you couldn't bring it up.

You were not allowed to talk about the movie.

They did not like the idea at all. But when this

thing came out, like I said, I mean, I skipped Halloween parties

and everything to stay home and watch this. And it was the most watched television

event in almost a decade.

So this thing, it screened on Halloween. Or it screamed,

like, a couple of days before. But,

I mean, it was. It was an event. I mean, there was magazines

and stuff out, you know, put out before. And just like you do any of

your Star wars and stuff, you know, you get your, you know, magazines to come

out beforehand, explaining stuff and all that. It was a

big deal. Speaking of Star wars, this is. This is basically the equivalent

of the Christmas special. It's pretty close.

So for you folks that have never seen this, I'll give

you a little backstory. Kiss being the hot commodity

that they were, they were approached.

Johnny didn't say who produced this movie. He talked about who directed it, but it

was produced by Joseph Barbera.

That's right. Hanna Barbera did

this movie. Oh. And it just. It just. It just definitely

comes across as something Hanna Barbera would do. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So when they have. When the idea was so to

kiss and their managers, they told him, it's gonna be like a hard day's night,

which is the, you know, incredible Beatles movie that came

out. It was such a phenomenon for the. Especially for Kiss, because they were such

Beatles fans. So they took that idea and said, it's gonna be a combination

of that and Star wars, and.

And somewhere it got lost.

But, yeah, I mean, there's. There's tons and tons of stories

of the failure of this movie, but I think Johnny

and I were talking back and forth, you know, while just

talking about this movie. And once you realize that this is

a Hanna Barbera movie, all your background music,

all your sound effects, everything is straight out of, like, Scooby Doo

cartoons. Yeah. And you're. Your. Your Hanna Barbera childhood

is ruined when you learn that,

dude. Well, you know, it's funny, and we'll get into the plot

and stuff, but, I mean, it plays out like Scooby Doo, man.

Yeah, it does. Like, straight up. I mean, that's. That's who it

was made by. The only thing it was missing was the Harlem Globetrotters.

Oh, that would have been great.

But the way after they agreed to do this.

Hannah Burma or whoever was in charge at the time,

they sent a writer to go around with each member of Kiss

and just follow them around and capture their personalities so they could write skips

based off of the way they reacted and talked.

And Pete straight up told them, f y'all,

I ain't doing it. Cause, you know, I gotta go out back and do some

heroin. But Ace could

care less, and he knew he was being followed, so he just went

around going, ah, ah. All the time. I kept expecting

Ace. I kept expecting Ace freely to go, my grand slam

was supposed to be with sausage.

But if you notice in the movie, he never really has. He has, like two

or three lines, but the rest time he just goes.

I thought that was an interesting choice of the writers

just have a squawk, like some kind of, like, dull pelican.

That's, let's put it this Gene Simmons is the best actor of

the four. Easily. Yeah, yeah, well,

and that's why he went on and had a somewhat career. Right.

But yeah, that's. That's why Sony goes in

the whole movie, which is one of the funny qualities

about it, right? Because they'll talk about something serious. He'll just go,

yeah, well, yeah,

we'll. Get to that later. But, yeah, they're, like, interrogating him later, and he just

squawks. I feel like the director probably

went home after shooting every night and looked his wife in the eye and was

like, honey, I'm sorry. Just kill me now.

Yeah, I mean, and like I said, pete, even when it

came time to finish the movie, he wouldn't even show up to

do overdubs or anything. So that's not Pete's

voice in the whole movie. Oh, wow.

Pete sounds like he's got Demi Moore stuck in his throat.

I mean, he's got a super raspy voice, very heavy accent,

and, yeah, you know, that kind of messed with everybody's

head because, you know, he was talking normal. And they're like,

wait a minute. That don't sound anything like Pete.

And there's just. It just goes on and on. The stunt double for

ace really was a black guy. And they didn't, they didn't cover his

hands, they didn't cover his neck. I mean, you can tell. It's just like,

wait a minute. It's kind of weird. It's kind of a weird parallel there,

because I had mentioned off air how I thought,

you know, I'm sure I'm not the only person who thinks this, but I always

thought Gene Simmons looked like Bill Duke. Like the white version of Bill Duke.

And then what's interesting, you bring that up, because Bill Duke and Commando,

he had a white stunt double for his fight with Arnold Schwarzenegger. So there's.

There's some synchronicity for you. Well, you want to hear something even funnier

is when you message Bill Duke. Some.

Somehow my brain got that scrambled as David Duke.

Oh, God. Like, isn't David

Duke white? Joseph, it's amazing you say

that, because I remember me and my wife going to see Preter, which she was

my girlfriend back then, but I saw this guy, and I was like.

I said, becky, I said, that guy looks like a black gene simmons.

He does. I mean, he even talks like him. They have, like, the same voice,

same mannerisms. Yeah, it's crazy.

Very much so. But, yeah, so, yeah, I mean, and the guy

that actually is the stunt dough for it, for Gene is like some really old

guy. So when you see him with the wig and stuff

on, it's like. It's almost like Benny Hill

stepping in for Gene in the movie. I mean, it's really, really obvious it's

not Gene. Oh, dude, there's a scene where it's like a wire. Like a wire

trick, and you could just tell it's an old dude.

That's it. That's what I'm talking about.

So, anyways, let's get on with this.

Yeah, we're at an amusement

park, which is actually magic, mountainous, which was supposedly the

biggest, you know, amusement park of its kind at the time.

And there's gonna be a big kiss concert there. Matter of fact, three of them

in a row, because, you know, you sound at an